


Blood Orange Poppies

by meditationonbaal



Category: Stoker (2013)
Genre: AU, F/M, Incest, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 15:18:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13638870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meditationonbaal/pseuds/meditationonbaal
Summary: He was too well arranged in everything he did, too All-American, too Cape Cod prep, always in Brooks Brothers twill, Ralph Lauren polo, brown saddle oxfords, wavy brown hair controlled in that perfect wind-swept way, fingernails clean, smile crooked but charming, and eyes half-crazed but affirmed and amiable. Alternate Ending, incest, violence, sexual content, many other warnings.





	1. Chapter 1

The human corpse differs little from that of any other animal carrion. Depending on its freshness, it may look no different from its living counterpart, a cold, stiff-boned doppelganger.

The initial reaction to death is entirely selfish. The first thought usually runs along the lines of how will this affect me, that “I” have lost something. “I” lost something, as if that stolen life was mine from the beginning. Not only is it selfish but wholly arrogant.

However, this reaction to death must be self-involved. How can any consequence and feeling resulting from death belong to the dead? Death is of no matter to the dead, so yes, all the burdens that follow – grief, loss, shock, issues of possession and inheritance – it must belong to the living.

I could not elicit this necessary selfish reaction in myself upon the death of my mother. I attempted to make all the appropriate arrangements in order to feel the weight of my loss, yet not a single emotion surfaced. In time, I believed it would come, like a dam slowly degraded by the elements. Perhaps I had only numbed myself to the tragedy, a common coping mechanism. Yet each passing day left me feeling increasingly relieved. I saw her remains wither bit by bit each day, and in turn, all of my connections to this estranged maternal forebearer faded with her decomposing flesh.

During her final moments I had lain beside her, observed how her jaw slackened as bloodied gray matter seeped from the shattered temporal, from where I had blasted a rifle shell clean through her skull. I could hear my uncle buckling his belt just as my mother’s bright blue eyes went clear and far away.

When I stood, my uncle carefully wiped the blood from my cheek where I had pressed it to the soaked chestnut floor.

“Go clean up. Are you hungry?” he asked me, letting the soiled handkerchief flutter down to drape partially over the mother’s frigid face. I shook my head dumbly and noticed he was smiling that boyish but off-putting crooked smile, the first middle four of his white upper teeth revealed oddly. Proud, exciting, knowing but screwed in wrong.

 

* * *

 

 

“When do we leave?”

He untangles my hair lock by lock with his fingers without my request.

“A week or so.” Those long bronzed fingers catch a snag but tug gently to relieve it.

“Why? Why not tomorrow? Why not right now?”

“It’s not the right time. It will look too suspicious.”

“How will we explain my mother?”

“We will say she has gone on a retreat to recover from grief. The death of her husband has overwhelmed her nerves. The fresh air will do her good,” he explains.

“Is that how they explained sending you away?” I inquire bluntly.

“Perhaps. Over time people stop asking until you are forgotten and then you never existed.” His hands slide down my shoulder blades once he has finished with my hair.

I swivel to face him, crossing my legs, hair still damp and curling around my neck. I pick at the hem of the silk nightgown my mother bought me.

My uncle is still wearing the clothes from before – the mustard sweater over a crisp oxford, slate slacks and loafers. There is blood flecked across his sweater in sizeable patches. His worn leather belt comfortably cinched around his solid hips, buckled and looped in place. I reach out and brush my fingers along the edge of his sweater, and he complies, pulling it over his head and dropping it over the side of the bed. He shrugs out of his oxford, leaving only a simple cotton undershirt.

Without his permission, I carefully unbuckle his belt and see his gut clench with the action. He murmurs my name as I pull the leather from its loops. I wrap it in a clean roll and place it on the night stand. He toes off his loafers over the edge of the bed, the heavy soles clunking to the ground.

I notice the tiny flecks of red on his dimpled cheeks and he looks like a little boy that got carried away with the household pets. But, he was not the type of child to limit himself to domesticated animals – no, his tastes extended to those small tots just learning to stairs, learning to climb upward to where he could strike them down. I licked my thumb and reached for the tip of his nose. He flinched momentarily before leaning forward to let me wipe the blood off his face.

It wasn’t until I was working at his chin and the coppery tang was soaked through my tongue that I realized this was the first time I was voluntarily touching the bare skin of my father’s brother. The momentum of the situation amplified by his pleased smile, as if he knew each move before I would make it, as if he was surprised in the best way to find he was right about all of me even after eighteen years of searching for me blind in the dark.

We collapse to the mattress simultaneously, laid on our sides facing each other. His knees knock into mine, his face bare inches from my nose, our hands brushing. His eyes are bright, practically electric. I wonder if he ever gets tired, does he slump or yawn.

“We are going to be okay. I know it,” he whispers.

I give him the smallest of nods in affirmation.

“What places have you always wanted to go?” he asks offhand.

“As in travel to?” I ask and he clarifies with a nod. “The Lindenburg Castle. The Venus Grotto. In winter.”

“That will be the first place we go once we finish New York. We will travel all over,” he promises.

“Anywhere?”

“Everywhere,” he confirms eagerly.

“And then Prague.”

“Bull fights in Spain.”

“Dye markets in India.”

“Spice trades in Indonesia.”

“Sailing the Tierra del Fuego.”

“New Years in Beijing.”

“Incan temples in Peru.”

He laughs giddily. “Wherever you want to go, we’ll go. We have a lifetime.”

I yawn with a small smile, and he tells me to rest, pushing my hair behind my ears and neck. His palm remains flat over my neck as I drift off.

 

* * *

 

I wake up with my cheek pressed tight to the soft cotton stretched across my uncle’s broad chest. One of his hands is tangled in the hair at the nape of my neck and the other has migrated around my waist. My hands are curled, one at his Adam’s apple and the other over the glide of his shoulder blade. Our legs are clumsily intertwined.

I rub my nose gently against his heart, hearing the solid steady thump of that sturdy organ. He smells like the garden, like soft silt and the grit of stone, fresh and green and pleasantly dirty.

A groan rumbles from his throat like thunder, and he shifts to cradle me closer. I lay my ear to the center of his chest, to listen to the sound of his body waking up, the increased pulse and breath, subtle tensing and movement of his hands.

“What do you want to do today?” his voice rasps with the vestiges of sleep.

I shake my head, burrowing further into him, and he sighs out a gentle chuckle.

“We have to get up some time,” he reasons.

“No, we don’t,” I declare gruffly.

“Okay, we don’t,” he concedes.

A silence passes. He cards his finger through my hair, his blunted nails dragging along my scalp and leaving pleasured sparks to race down my shoulders. He runs hot, I realize, but then so do I.

“How did it make you feel?” he asks quietly but surely, not afraid to hear the answer.

“Like a chain snapped. A weak chain,” I admit.

“A confining chain,” he clarifies

“In a manner of speaking.”

“It was easy,” he concludes.

“It was a weak chain,” I reiterate.

“Of course.”

“I cannot forgive you”

“For your mother?” He sounds flabbergasted.

“For my father.” I pull away completely, sitting up.

His features collapse in concern, almost into betrayal. “Are you going to leave me?”

“If I was planning on doing that, I would have shot you and not my mother,” I explain.

“We are still leaving together?”

“Yes.”

“But, you cannot forgive me?”

“Yes.”

“Then – “.

“I am angry with you.”

“But, you still want – “.

“Yes.”

He smiles that giddy boyish grin with the odd showing of teeth.

The pale blue light of morning is coming in through the window. I can see the fog in the trees.

“Let’s play a game before breakfast.”

He perks up, intrigued. “What game? One I know?”

“One everybody knows. Hide and seek.”

His grin is contagious. “Limits?”

“The train tracks.”

“You hide first.”

“Count to fifty slowly.”

“One Mississippi.”

I lift his hands and place them over his eyes. “No peeking.” His smile bursts like a star.

 

* * *

  
It is easy to meld into the scenery, curled within the knotted roots of a tree. Nature doesn’t hesitate to swallow you up. Yet even as my body dissolves into the wood and the soil and the green, my surroundings remain in sharp relief. From the pitch of the wind whistling through the leaves to the infinite trail of ants to the tip tops of the trees.

Each animal makes a distinct noise as it moves through the woods. Even with my eyes closed, I can determine its identity by the sound of its path – the erratic skittering and halting of squirrels and the crinkling crawl of beetles, the cheer of the robin at dawn compared to the jeering of blue birds. The most subtle of sounds belongs exclusively to the doe, the animal that treads so lightly and kindly along the forest floor, careful of every snap and crunch. It is the quiet, gentle doe I endeavor for, so aware, conscious of itself almost like a human would be. And, human beings always make the best prey, the most dangerous game.

I lay my head on the soft forest floor, pressing my cheek to the litter of decomposing maple leaves. The steps of the doe go unnoticed. I close my eyes and listen closer. Thunder rolls overhead, sending vibrations through the air and into the ground. A train of single file ants crawls up and over my ankles without a second thought, flowing in and out of the woodwork as if I were not there.

He is a presence before he is a sound, but he doesn’t need to be the quiet one.

As he passes behind the tree, I feel a cool breath on my face and open my eyes to stare into the dilated centers of my mother’s dead gaze, the icy blue of her eyes lost to her pupils. A final agonal gasp wafts across my brow, displacing eye lashes and the fine hairs across my cheeks, smelling like summer wine. I think about her lips on those of my uncle’s, how she closed her eyes in a disingenuous show of passion long left dormant, how her hands clung to his clean shaven jaw line like she was playing a part. And through the curtains, his eyes never left mine, the image of me locked into his mind while he clumsily laid his lips over those of my mother’s.

I crawl out from under the hollow of the tree and take off barefoot deeper into the woods. The delicate pat of my feet across the forest floor resembles the doe, and the ensuing chase of my uncle’s heavier footsteps is akin to the padding of a wolf. The thin silk straps of my gown are light across my shoulders and the ground is soft and forgiving under my feet. The thunder roars intermittently with the sound of my uncle’s feet. Hurdling fallen tree trunks and temporary creeks, slip sliding across river rock and dodging stray branches, until I hit gravel and the rusting train tracks and dart along the edge of the woods along our previously determined boundary. My uncle’s pursuit never loses pace. I debate moving for higher ground, wondering if he would follow me to the tops of the trees, follow me down the steep edge of a rocky waterfall into uncertain depths, follow me past the reaches of antiquated Stoker manor and the shallow graves marked by playful stone spheres, follow me into the visceral red that lines our minds.

A surprised gasp is forced out of me as his hand closes around a fistful of silk, and I hear the fragile fabric give a little bit away when he swings me around, my back crashing against an ancient oak. I throw my hands up to shove him away, but he slaps vices around my wrists and holds me there. Violence permeates us. The rapid succession of labored breaths between us creates a pocket of heated, humid air. A flash of lightning appears behind his head for a brief second, and I see the sweat dripping down his temples, beading on the tip of his nose and chin. His cheeks are dimpled and flushed around the crooked, boyish smile, and he looks like a child, looks so young, looks anew.

“I caught you.”

He studies the progression of sweat drops down the length of my neck for a moment, one of the straps of my night gown torn but my heaving bust protecting my modesty. His pupils are blown, and I know my own are an exact reflection. He leans down to press his forehead just under my chin, sweat against sweat. He can play the part with my mother, but he would only voluntarily touch me. His breath is cool across my clavicle, down the center of my chest.

I can see a train passing in the distance, through the infinite branches, hear the rattle of the tracks and the screeching of the railroad switch. His hands tighten around my wrists, pulling my arms around him in a forced embrace. And his nose knocks my chin on the way up when he presses his lips to mine, keeping his eyes open to gauge my reaction.

I let Whip kiss me first because he let my mother do the same.

It is both a reflex and an aware decision when my canine nicks his lower lip, but unlike the morbidly curious and underwhelming Whip, my uncle returns the favor, his equally sharp tooth sinking into my bottom lip. He lets me go to wrap me up in his arms, and feeling the extent of his touch all over me is a shock to my senses, the width of his hands, the strength and fervor in his hold. I hesitantly place a hand on the back of his head, the grading of the hair from nape to crown. My other hand feels along the damp white t-shirt, the glide of his shoulder blade, the tension in the muscles along his back. Blood mingles as the visceral red in our minds bleed into one another, and his tongue is in my mouth and he tastes like iron and cuts and bruises. Our eyes slide closed together, because I would rather feel it than see it at this point, and I know this unfamiliar and subconscious fury does not resemble the disingenuous passions he concocted for my mother. The thought alone makes my grip in his hair intensify, ruining his perfect arrangement, making him messy, spoiling his act. I think chaos in the cacophony of clattering trains and growling thunder and the rushing breaths between us, anticipating an even bigger bang on the way.

He breaks away suddenly to rain kisses across my face, somehow gracious and appreciative, the trail of pecks ending on my mouth once more.

I cannot bring myself to pull away.


	2. Becoming

He knew it was not in him to be like Charlie, yet as my birth approached, an irrational unease grew in my father. Richard feared Charlie’s curse was hidden somewhere in his own blood, even if was not in his own essence to be a natural born killer. He saw the cold and selfish beauty of Evelyn, saw the reflection of his own mother in this elegant woman with her perfectly coiffed bob of fiery hair and practiced pallor. He hoped his own gentle and patient demeanor would balance out with his wife’s flighty inclinations, that she would educate their child on straight-backed piano playing and instill a perfect French accent and he could teach their little girl the stairs, the climb, the progression of life. 

Within moments of my birth, my father knew. With no doubt, he knew. I emerged silent and beady eyed, and Richard felt the same fear he recalled when Charlie was born just as quiet. Still born or a monster in the guise of an infant? A cruel, unmentionable part of Richard hoped I had no life, blessed with being dead over being a beast, but the midwife exclaimed with salutes and handed me to my father following the appropriate measurements and blood sampling, a little girl in a bundle of pale pink blankets, an inquisitive face and sharp little eyes. Evelyn collapsed and passed out on the hospital bed, promptly hemorrhaging dangerously while the doctor and nurses rushed around to quickly contain the bleeding. Richard watched the flow of blood and felt me soundless and motionless in his arms, loved but feared. 

Within a fortnight, the family returned to the manor together, tiny India swallowed up by her car seat in the back and Evelyn passed out on the passenger side. Somehow Richard felt his infant daughter was far more sentient than his unmindful wife, who, over the past couple weeks, seemed to show a stubborn antipathy toward her newfound motherhood. She refused to nurse India, barely acknowledged the existence of the newborn in her plastic cradle next to the hospital bed. The doctors explained to Richard that it was a bout of baby blues, but that my father should inform him if her behavior lasted longer than two weeks or worsened. Richard contemplated the repercussions of post-partum depression on the state of his family as they pulled into the winding gravel driveway. Mrs. McGarrick and the rest of the staff and close family were waiting to greet them with flowers and congratulations, eager to fawn over the newest addition to the Stoker aristocracy. As he took in their beaming faces, he worried his wife might not recover all her mental faculties as the weeks wore on – deeper down, he knew they would not. 

Evelyn quickly retired to her private rooms, claiming a migraine and exhaustion from all the commotion, yet the small and comfortable celebration wore on into the early evening, all the relatives and staff cooing over the beautiful baby India, whose eyes were deceptively dark but still blue, the combination of her father’s almost black eyes and the piercing blue of her mother’s. Many of them believed she would be a very agreeable baby, so tame and inquisitive, no fuss or colic. Mrs. McGarrick reminisced about the days when Richard was just an infant, how wonderful and happy a baby he was, how easy all three of the Stoker boys had been as babies, yet a moment of unease followed this statement as each recalled the one stain on the Stoker name. 

Richard left the group and walked into the dining area, surveyed the numerous elegantly wrapped presents for his new daughter. He began to read the tags on each, running his fingers along the silk ribbons and intricate bows. There was a simple white shoebox on the edge of the table, placed in such a way to appear inconspicuous amongst the rest, and once Richard’s eyes passed over the tag, the calligraphy was unmistakable in a hand he would never forget. 

‘INDIA.’

How could he know? How did he find out? My father eyes the group in the living room, watches the mass croon over his beautiful baby girl and then there is Mrs. McGarrick gazing back at him, sees his hands on the plain white shoebox with the goldenrod silk ribbon, and a small part of him feels betrayed yet understands Charlie should know about his family, know about the existence of his niece even if Richard would never allow the two to meet. But, why should Charlie be interested in India at all when he has failed to show any interest in any of the other affairs of the family, including his marriage to Evelyn or Aunt Gin’s recent divorce? Why and what should he send to his delicate baby niece? 

In the following months, little me grew more aware, sometimes to the extent that it seemed abnormal for an infant to be so self-conscious, be able to look and see and appear to understand. At a certain point I crawled into one of my father’s office closets while he was busy proofreading designs for a library renovation. In there I discovered the white shoebox, drawn to the vibrancy of the goldenrod ribbon, and my tiny fingers tugged and tangled with the ties until they fell away. I flipped the cover off and dug through the white tissue paper until my eyes lit on my first pair of Muffy’s saddle shoes. I cannot remember the feelings that came upon me then as a little underdeveloped tot, but my father and Mrs. McGarrick retold the story many times in much the same way. My father recalled finding me in his closet holding the teeny pair of saddle shoes in my chubby baby fingers, eyes bright and surprised by the existence of them. He tried to take them from me and put them back in the box, but I would have none of it and flared up into a violent tantrum. He had never heard me scream or cry, though my mother had regaled a few instances about some of her own private unsuccessful and angry encounters with me. When he returned the pair of shoes to my hands, I instantly quieted and resumed inspecting the spotless white and black leather, the ruddy rubber soles. As he slid the shoes onto my feet, he was surprised by how well they fit, as if that was to be the exact moment I was supposed to find them and put them on, as if it was predetermined. The thought alone made him uneasy and he wanted to get rid of the shoes, throw them away, never speak to Charlie again, but he knew if he took them from me, I would cry until they were returned. He knew without attempting, and it killed him to know. 

On his yearly visit to the Crawford Institute, Charlie was lounging on a hunter green chesterfield looking smug, expecting Richard and a new string of reservations towards his younger brother. The fears never stopped coming where Charlie was concerned; each year, just as Richard was beginning to wrap his head around one anxiety about his brother, another would spring anew. 

“Don’t they suit her well?” Charlie remarked, gazing somewhere far off as if he could imagine little India tottering around the room in her well-fitted saddle loafers, not knowing they were tailored just for her. 

And each year, the same simple white shoebox with the goldenrod ribbon would appear amongst my birthday presents, and each year, I believed they were given to me by my father, and I was always amazed that he knew me so well. I believed he knew me better than anyone, and he would have me think the same. I did feel close to my father, closer than anyone, but there was always that essential separation between us, always the knowing that he was not like me, but he could understand me. He knew no one would ever understand me better than Charlie, not even himself, my good father, my good man. 

There is a strange comfort that comes with encountering your reflection when you are not standing before a mirror. I stood before the mirror weeks ago searching my mien for some shift in character, some change in my nature, only to come to the conclusion there were no alterations, only a revealing, only a shedding of that poorly planned person suit. And now I am standing before Charlie in the same bathroom, dripping rain water and trailing muddy feet on the white porcelain. The appearance of Charlie overlies my own with no odd points, no mismatched parts. It is my reflection as it has always been, as it will always be. 

“I knew you wouldn’t mind,” he says as he places his hands around my upper arms, runs over the length of them.

I observe him as he observes me, captivated and pleased, his touch reverent. “You didn’t think to ask,” I point out. 

“I didn’t think at all,” he informs me. “I just did.” 

“Me too,” I admit, curling my fingers around his, okay with this innocent brushing of callused skin, okay with just touching him, to be touching another human being. His palm is damp and warm on my cheek, the tips of his fingers sliding along my hairline, edging my temple. I can be sure. Living with this killer, I can be sure. 

He was the center of my first fantasy. It only seems appropriate he should be present at the first real one. 

His lips are laid over mine, quickly coaxing my mouth open, sliding his larger tongue inside to play with my own. The center of my chest aches just beneath my sternum, deep and throbbing like it is hard to breathe. I close my eyes and feel his hands take a hold of me, tugging at the delicate silk of my nightgown now muddy and torn and ruined like the dregs of my ties to that easily forgotten maternal forbearer. His body runs so hot it leaches into my own, blowing on an ember that has just found its light. He is guiding me towards the bathtub, and I fumble to get away to turn the faucet on, pushing the knob to scalding and holding onto the soap shelf with the front of his body pressed tight behind me, his lips running along the nape of my neck, surely making marks, and I can barely think straight as the fog in my mind resembles the rising steam. 

“Charlie.” It nearly gets lost as he slants his mouth over mine again. I yank the stopper to get the shower going, and we slip slide into the tub together, clothes drenched, grass and soil swirling at our feet, nearly toppling over until he gets my back against the tile under the spray, pulling our hips together. 

My father never wanted me to meet this man. I should not have. I cannot change that now. It happened. I only have him. I only want him. 

I can feel the extent of his hands cupped over my buttocks, locking our hips together, and I wonder if he has been with any other, has he held another woman this way, was he testing and practicing as I had done with Whip? But, the thought flies away when the tips of his fingers are brushing near a place that makes me rake my nails along the nape of his neck. I kiss him harder, wanting to consume my reflection, and he feels around until my reaction lets him know he has hit home, and his hands are so much more satisfying than my own. As he reaches both of his long arms around me, one hand running the length of my lower back, feeling each dimple and sinewy stretch of muscle, the other works me up into a melting fog, like my mind and thoughts will just drain into a pool at the pit of my belly. And, he is whispering in my ear, his hand taking mine and pressing it to the front of his trousers, now plastered to his hips, his belt settled snugly there. It is less a conscious thought than an instinctual reaction as I loosen the belt and break the bridge of his slacks. I lean my forehead into his chest, rubbing it back and forth slowly trying to wrestle back some sense of clarity amongst all this surreality, and he keeps me afloat, kissing the top of my head, his breath hotter than the scalding water. 

I slide my hands around the length of him, mimicking the pace of his own fingers playing me like the ivory keys, naturally able to find the rhythm. As shower static rushes and blood drums in my ears, keeping time, his breath and mine the melody. His head falls back against the tile, his arms pulling me a little closer as I take a firmer grip, create some variety in the movements of my hands. I lift my head to look up at him, to gauge his reactions, clenching my thighs as that familiar feeling approaches both of us. His belt is clinking with the tempo of my hands, and I remember how that leather looked wrapped around Whip’s neck, how every vein in his neck looked ready to burst, his Adam’s apple tight underneath the belt, how with his head craned back like that he appeared caught in the throes of pleasure. 

Charlie surges forward, the movement of his body causing my back to slam against the tile, my skull knocking the wall, but he keeps me steady as his mouth takes mine once more. He slips two fingers inside, softened by the heat and steam and the friction of his other hand still working at the epicenter of every nerve. 

The world goes away; there are no people, no manmade noises, no inane human behaviors, just Stoker manor and Charlie and the hunt. Every muscle is tight and contracting at once and I have no voice, a scream with no voice. His teeth are creating imprints all over, like he has designs to feast on me. A particularly brutal bite at the juncture of my neck and shoulder sends me over the edge, the end of the world. 

“India.” The name from his lips creates the image of the word printed in his hand across that clean ecru cardstock, India ink from his Montblanc. 

Like an animal quick, I steal his mouth, slide my tongue along his as I return the favor, my hands picking up speed. I nip his smooth jawline, graze my teeth along his Adam’s apple, wonder what his neck would look like with the belt wrapped taut around it. He groans and slip slides his fingers along over-sensitive, finished flesh, making my hips jump and throb. He was close before my fall, and fresh warmth spills over my hands, sticky and hot and pleasing. 

One broad hand clasps my chin and lifts my gaze to his face, his crazy blue eyes now hooded and satisfied. For once lacking electricity but still burning. 

“India.” He smiles, smiles smug as he had when my father greeted him following my first birthday, smiles as we fit together. We are sure there is no other. We are certain.


	3. The Game

“Stroker.”

 

The faucet knob pops up, a feeble leak drip-dropping into the scratched porcelain. The last bell rings with a certain finality, the ending of my secondary education as anticlimactic as the flaccid drips from the faucet head. Chris Pitts is an effective barrier between the entrance to the girl’s lavatory and myself, but I feign ignorance and yank down on the drying cloth to get a cleaner portion, gazing out the window to watch my peers pour like so many ants from an ant hill, agitated and stirred by the prospect of three months of freedom.

 

Charlie must already be at the front gate, unaffected but smug as the schoolgirls fawn over his imposing feline stature and the fitting jaguar figurehead on the hood of his car.

 

Pitts is unaccompanied by his usual merry band of cronies, a pleasant change of pace since it makes him a little quieter at the moment. He doesn’t have to say anything, because he isn’t required to explain his actions anymore. His jibes and sneers had always been more for the benefit of his followers, never myself.

 

In the mirror, I check the buttons down the length of my shirt and the continuation of contrasting buttons down my skirt, making sure each loop hole is snug and fitted properly around their respective buttons. Pitts crosses the length of the bathroom, his sneakers light on the cheap tile, and as he slows to a stop he maintains a safe distance of three feet, swiping a glance at my hands for any stray sharp objects. My bag is limp at my feet, far away enough from my hands that he could cross three feet before I could get into it, but I cannot bring myself to worry about all the possible transgressions a dime-a-dozen bully like Chris Pitts could think to pull on me.

 

So, I turn around, leaning back against the counter, my fingers curling around the rough edge, nails picking at where the veneer is peeling to reveal the MDF beneath. I want to get a good look at his face one more time before I leave, this underwhelming tormenter of mine. He looks so uncharacteristically serious that it unsettles me.

 

“Come to tell me you love me?” I ask, enhancing the inflection in my voice for his sake.

 

Taking the hint, he lapses back into the part of the apish and contrived bully always joking and jeering. “Right,” he snorts with not a little sardonicism. “I am just so in love with you, freak. Full of yourself? Please.”

 

Athletic tape and gauze are wrapped around his right hand, covering the neat puncture wound. I would never forget the fleshy sound of the blood-soaked wood curling through the sharpener. I kept the shavings in my pencil box as a keepsake, an amusing memory to reminisce about on dull days. I cannot help smiling just a little remembering it, the animal groan of frustration and pain he released after I did it.

 

He notices me looking at his hand and lifts it up, inspecting the bandage. “Did you think that was funny?”

 

I shrug. “I thought it was fun.”

 

“You nearly put a pencil through my hand.”

 

“Ready for more then?” I inquire, referencing our current sweet little alone time, cornering me in the girl’s restroom. “I’d be happy to put in the other, balance it out for you. Give you a stigmata.”

 

“A what?” He clenches his fists, a temper I am well-acquainted with. “You’re more talkative than usual, you know that? It’s pissing me off.”

 

I glance at the door, wondering if anyone is going to haplessly stumble in, end all of this prematurely. I cannot tell if I want them to.

 

“You’re much more fun than usual,” I note, turning my attention back to him. “Shut me up then.”

 

His hands slam the counter on either side of my hips, hoping for a flinch, some reaction, any reaction, but I just look down at them and wonder if he has reopened the wound. His breaths are coming so fast I can practically gauge the rapid pace of his heartbeat, nearly hear the adrenaline speeding through his bloodstream. He is just a lamb pretending to be a wolf, and that is all fine and well amongst the multitude of sheep. All bark and no bite.

 

I play coy, keeping my eyes downturned. His hands are on me, and the shudder his touch elicits turns my stomach. My neck cranes away, but his grip holds my head in place. I refuse to put my hands on him.

 

I can see the whites of his eyes so clearly in that stricken gaze, as if he is realizing for the first time I am a real girl, real enough that his hands won’t pass straight through me. He never imagined he would get this far. Fantasy turning to reality seems too much for him, and I only hear barking. Moments are passing but he remains inert, unsure of what comes next.

 

My eyes find his, his golden-boy blue eyes. “Is that all?” I wonder flatly, feeling a little disappointed.

 

One of his hands feels along my shoulder blade, across my rib cage to the tender lumbar spine, testing the give in my bones and flesh. “I could break you,” he mutters offhand, surprised to touch and feel the physical humanity of me, the façade of fragility.

 

“Why don’t you try?” I offer. 

 

“Aren’t you going to fight me?”

 

I smile. “Aren’t you going to fight me?” Not as a mocking mimic but a sincere inquiry.

 

His teeth knock mine brutally, splitting a gum and my upper lip, and his tongue is over-large and shoved down my throat. I was planning on biting him back, but he beat me to the punch. So many vicious kisses over the week, I am started to recognize a pattern. I rip my mouth away and box his right ear, shoving my elbow up into his gut.

 

“You fucking bitch,” he groans, grappling for one of my arms in his grip and the back of his other hand making a fine imprint on my cheek, knuckles on bone. He flips me around abruptly, my hips knocking the counter and locked there tight as he surrounds me, grounding one of my hands to the countertop.

 

It is a rush. He knows he doesn’t have a lot of time. He gets a fistful of my hair in his other hand and slams my face to the counter top, trying to get a good daze going.  There is the bite. I try to push myself away from the counter, but he keeps me pinned, rummaging to gather my skirt up. I throw an elbow back again, catching him on the chest, yet he grunts and shoves my face back onto the counter.

 

There isn’t panic. All I can muster is annoyance, irritation barely pushing past moderate.

 

I can hear it faintly outside, his whistling echoing through the hallways nonchalantly, flippantly, casually – the whistling tune of a lonely man.

 

Charlie wrestles Chris across the bathroom floor, dragging him partially by the hair and the throat to one of the stalls. Chris struggles to twist out of his grip, shouting obscenities as he slides along the tile. There is the sloshing of toilet water, thumping against hollowed out porcelain and a sickening gurgle.

 

My hands smooth along my shirt, airing out my skirt to let it drape naturally again. In the mirror, I note the bruised lips against pallor, the swelling over my right cheekbone darkening. I spit blood into the sink, a large glob of saliva and gore sliding slowly down the drain to join the impotent drip-drop. Pressing down on the faucet knob, sprinkling powdered soap onto my hands, low-pressure leaded water tepid between my fingers covered in the grit of the soap, and behind me Chris gasps for breath only to be forced under once more.

 

“India.”

 

Charlie is crouched above Chris, his Rachmaninov hands tangled in blonde hair to hold the kid’s head in the toilet bowl, which thrashes wildly, knocking his skull into the porcelain. Two minutes before his brain starts to die, what is left of it. Charlie searches my features for an answer to his unsaid question. It is enough, I think. Charlie, knowing, yanks the kid from the jaws of the porcelain god, letting Pitts curl into a fetus gasping and hacking up sewer water.

 

I lean over to hook my messenger bag on my shoulders while Charlie washes his hands and smooths his hair back, runs his hand along his clean-shaven jaw line. His shoes and the bottoms of his pant legs are soaked, those wonderful brown saddle oxfords soiled by toilet water. Yet, he doesn’t seem to mind when he licks his forefinger and wipes away the blood on my chin. He brings his finger back to his lips to taste the hint of iron, the blood that is also his.

 

“Nothing will ever be easy for us, but it will never be boring either,” Charlie reasons. It forces a smile from me.

 

The bathroom door swings open as a gaggle of girls stumbles in giggling and squealing only to halt suddenly upon the scene of a drenched and wheezing Chris Pitts on the bathroom floor. I grab Charlie’s hand and guide him from the restroom, past the dumbstruck girls who then rush to help Pitts. Charlie’s grip matches my own and then there is nothing else.

 

* * *

 

 

“Black widow,” Charlie remarks as he pulls the key from the ignition.

 

Stoker manor appears like a remnant from some forgotten era, an anachronistic phantom looming in the middle of the woods, and each time I pass the threshold of the gates, it feels like I am slipping into a place the others cannot reach, the world outside contrasting so sharply with the world in here. I am afraid of all that I can see outside these gates, but not so much the things I see but the ability to see. I fear the knowing, the self-awareness that consumes me. I hear all, see all, and the barrage of sounds and sights only leaves me wanting, dissatisfied. It is the dissatisfaction that comes with the knowing that I fear is the extent of living. Will I always be left wanting, I think. Will there never be anything more than a string of people and objects that fail to arouse interest?

 

I am tired of knowing. I long to be known.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

Charlie smiles at his own inside joke. “Insects, the lot of them – trying for a bit of the sweet and all of them lose their heads. People, boys, are attracted to the things they don’t understand. No one appreciates the things they know. To them, you are something they will never know. And they would gladly lose a limb just to know,” he explains, rubbing his forehead as if disconcerted by the thought.

 

“And you?” I push.

 

“Me?” He chuckles. “I am satisfied with what I know, more than satisfied. Knowing is worth much more than guessing. Lucky me I don’t have to lose a limb to know you, India, but I would gladly collect heads to keep you from being known by others.”

 

What worries me is the fear we inspire, but it is also that fear we invoke that inspires me.

 

The air is muggy, and I feel as if I am breathing in steam. The cicadas are buzzing, nothing but white noise in the background.

 

Keeping my hand firmly clasped in his, I pull his arm across the gear shift to press his wrist to my swollen cheek, the glass watch-face cold and soothing where the blood is pulsing angrily. I can hear the steady tick-tick of the diamond gears and cogs, yet the idea of time remains abstract to me, some intangible law of existence hovering in the periphery. In time, the grotesque aubergine will fade to a sallow yellow, but the issue of mortality fails to strike true. Won’t I always come back to the same state, bruises healing, bones mending, always back to the start? I cannot comprehend an ending to being, but I feel no remorse resigning others to whatever nothing place succeeds death. Sometimes I believe I am testing the limits of existence with each kill, somehow challenging death to reverse itself, bring the shattered teacup back together. Death never seems to have a proper rebuttal, so I continue to shatter teacups. Eventually I will shatter my own, thrust myself of my own accord into that unnamable nothing place. Would Charlie follow me down into the blind?

 

Charlie laughs to himself. “Are there any others I need to worry about?”

 

I always believed I was a remote figure in high school, irrevocably detached from my peers, and I was content when they opted to have nothing to do with me. But now, looking at Charlie and that easy smile, I realize there is a game to be played. How long did it take Charlie to learn the rules, and how did he become aware of them in as isolated a place as the Crawford Institute? I frighten the lambs. Charlie soothes and then consumes, the clever big bad wolf.

 

I answer him honestly, “I don’t know.” But then. “Are there any I need to know about?”

 

His smile goes rigid for a moment before flattening. “Why would you ask me that?”

 

“I think it is a reasonable question.”

 

“How could there be anyone else?” He asks as if the answer is something he cannot comprehend, something his mind had never crossed. His grip on my hand tightens, but he pulls his wrist from my cheek, yanking me across the gear shift to be a little closer to him.

 

“To me, you always seem like an open invitation,” I reason.

 

The corner of his lips curls up, half-smug. “I am always an open invitation to you,” he admits. “Was that not clear?”

 

“But it is a game.”

 

“What is a game?”

 

“The game you play with others,” I clarify.

 

“Do you think I am playing it with you?”

 

“Sometimes.”

 

“Well don’t, because I am not. I would trust you’d be able to tell the difference.” So there is some uncertainty there. He lets go of my hand. “There is something I need to do.”

 

He starts to climb out of the Jaguar, sliding my father’s sunglasses into his shirt front pocket, checking the fit of his belt.

 

“Don’t touch her,” I warn.

 

“It needs to be cleaned up,” he argues.

 

“Don’t.”

 

He slams the car door behind him and marches into the woods in the direction of the greenhouse.


	4. Full Bloom

My mother was always this perfectly coiffed and groomed woman, a woman of noble pedigree and old money. She met my father at their private college where Richard was studying to be an architect and she was there in name only, to pick up an MRS and her accessory liberal arts degree. In my father she saw handsome wealth, a means to increase her social standing as well as having a good-looking man at her side. She adored tasteful fashion, followed it fairly religiously, kept up with her gaggle of WASP friends she rarely saw. Blushing silk and stiff fabrics in rich colors, admirably balanced in three inch heels, my mother was only well-dressed prey.

 

That was how everyone seemed to me, all of varying degrees – prey. Easy prey and difficult prey, but each prey just the same, Pitts and Whip and Mrs. McGarrick and Auntie Gin, things meant to be conquered.

 

I have never felt a part but only apart.

 

In her own way I imagine my mother loved my father, but I believe she was naïve and underdeveloped in her love. She thought there was a prepackaged method to living, believed she would not only follow in her mother’s footsteps but improve upon them, trip into a loving and fulfilling marriage with a husband she adored and children she cherished. Evelyn knew very little about Richard Stoker or his background but she fell in love with Stoker Manor when she first laid eyes on it. She could picture herself playing tennis with Richard after Sunday brunch and picking daisies with her firstborn on the lawn. Evelyn concocted this ideal fantasy in which she would live happily ever after, free from her past insecurities and addictions, emancipated from her various neuroses involving the uncertainty of her future. Evelyn nee Sharp would become Evelyn Stoker and be the queen of the Manor, finish out her days in comfort and leisure hosting garden parties and dancing with Richard at charity balls.

 

Evelyn feared the uncertainty that came with the future, but when she adopted the Stoker name she also took on the inherent misfortune that haunts the Stoker clan. There was some certainty in that fate. In time she began to catch on to the undercurrent of secrecy surrounding the Manor, deciphered the undertones and eavesdropped on the hushed whispers between the in-laws and the help alike.

 

A year into her marriage to Richard, the worry set in, the anxiety. Richard got the job done well-enough, but it was what he didn’t talk about that Evelyn privately ruminated on. He was prone to bouts of withdrawn solemnity.  Richard found it difficult to lie; it was not in his nature to be unfaithful or dishonest. Occasionally he would take trips, not business trips but personal trips without her. And when she asked what for, he could not say, would not tell her where, lied by omission because the truth overwhelmed him.

 

Richard’s late mother once let slip the existence of the other Stoker children, whom Richard had never mentioned. Tipsy one night at a dinner party before seating, the widow Stoker, matriarch of the family, informed Evelyn that she had had three beautiful Stoker boys, three perfect little boys. An insensitive remark, Widow Stoker both lamented and rationalized that it was probably best Richard was the only one to make it, as matters of inheritance were a sticky and sometimes violent business. Mrs. Stoker was glad the estate remained intact because of it.

 

Evelyn couldn’t help bringing it up to Richard later that night. They had not yet reached the point of sleeping in separate bedrooms, and Richard was pulling the throw pillows off the bed.

 

She saw his features take on that glassy-eyed, faraway look, the same look he had when he withdrew, when he prepared for one of his special trips he never explained. He pulled the comforter back, untucked the sheets.

 

“Jonathan died when he was still young. Charlie travels for work. He hasn’t been in touch in years, not since Jonathan passed,” Richard explained monotonously, the lie uncomfortable on his tongue but coming out smoother than expected given how much he had to practice feeding it to others.

 

Evelyn tested the waters regardless. “How did he die?”

 

Richard sighed, gave up something close to the truth though he didn’t believe it. “In an accident.”

 

Eve decides to let the subject rest for the duration of their marriage. All in all, it didn’t concern her much, considering Richard’s father was dead and the Stoker estate was theirs and the living brother never came around. Richard performed the part of the doting husband wonderfully, for the most part. Evelyn didn’t pay it any more mind.

 

A year later, Evelyn is pregnant and Richard is happy and nervous at the same time. She agrees to become pregnant as a last ditch effort to stymy the matrimonial bleed, Richard’s waning interest and her own dulled affections.

 

Being pregnant irritates her though. She isn’t allowed to drink or take her prescriptions for the remainder of the pregnancy. She cannot eat any of her favorite foods or drink coffee. There are so many don’ts and few dos that she starts to foster the first hints of bitterness towards the thing growing inside of her.

 

When she received the news she was pregnant from her doctor, she expected to feel an instant spark of maternal love, an inherent need to protect this new life nestled in her lower belly, expected to be changed instantly into this selfless, patient, and kind mother that Richard would continue to love, grow to love even more.

 

But, Richard had begun to see her for what she was, this vapid and egocentric woman. Richard had nearly begun to hate her before she became pregnant, and Evelyn could sense it in his mannerisms and attitude towards her. Yet, Richard didn’t hate her, not yet. He had merely grown indifferent, started to see their marriage as something formulaic, wash rinse and repeat in equal measures. For a brief moment, Richard started to think Evelyn didn’t want children and he would be resigned to a fruitless marriage, to a useless marriage, a marriage for name only.

 

Evelyn began to run through the reasons for having a child once she became pregnant. The obvious reasons were legacy and natural instinct. She hoped for a little girl because another reason occurred to her, the possibility of a clean slate.

 

Over the years, she had begun to foster this deep sense of self-loathing for the person she had become, for the person her parents had pushed her to become. When she had first met Richard, she fashioned a counterfeit passion for the man, for the fantasy she built up around him. Evelyn thought through Richard she would become a real woman, but when that fantasy felt short in the reality of their marriage, she started to play pretend until she realized she had become just like her mother. She was beautiful but her beauty got her nowhere with Richard’s heart. She was intelligent but cleverness won her no favors with her husband or his relatives. She was popular and relatively respected amongst their upper circle yet Richard seemed not to care much for dinner parties or the symphony. All she had left was the prospect of children, an idea she had hoped to postpone until a few more years into their marriage. She had hoped to have a little more personal time with Richard before she would have to share him, before she would have to ruin her beauty for a child, before she would have to sacrifice her youth to some urchin. The marriage ran its course too early, so Evelyn settled for getting pregnant in order to revive it.

 

As her pregnancy progressed, her dissatisfaction with Richard grew to the point he left a permanent bad taste in her mouth. All he could talk about was the pregnancy, the promise of a new child, the plans and hopes he had for the baby. Evelyn had hoped having a child would give their marriage a clean slate, give her life a clean slate, but as her belly swelled and stretch marks appeared on her hips and her breasts ached near constantly and Richard refused to make love to her, she began to feel her hopes torn apart. She began to resent the infant, and with this resentment, her self-loathing and anxieties accumulated. Evelyn knew at the end of her term, Richard would take the baby away and she would be left with nothing and no one.

 

During the pregnancy, Evelyn suspected something was wrong. She could not elicit any goodwill towards her unborn child. She felt utterly unattached, as if she was just a vessel for some stranger. She felt used. Nausea overwhelmed her, kept her bedridden most days. She began to suffer migraines and frequent nosebleeds. Many mornings she awoke to a pool of red on her pillow, her cheek crusted with dried blood, her skull throbbing and her stomach rebelling. She questioned her doctor, asked if there was anything wrong with the baby, if the pregnancy was going to hurt her. The doctor, the help, the Stokers, even Richard assured her nothing was wrong, that she only needed to rest, to stay off her feet, to relax. Stress was bad for the baby. But, Evelyn wondered if the baby was bad for her.

 

The birth was more painful and laborious than the pregnancy by tenfold. Evelyn begged for a cesarean section, pled for more drugs, but suffered nearly 24 hours of contractions. She screamed to the point her voice was hoarse and broken, cried until blood vessels broke in the whites of her eyes. She knew the infant would kill her. Spread eagle before a sea of sterile masked faces for the better part of a day, Evelyn hated her husband and despised the baby and wished she had never gotten married or gone to the same college as Richard Stoker.

 

The passage of the little devil’s head ripped her seams, but Evelyn was relieved nonetheless, slumped against the cheap hospital pillow, and all the air left her. Then there was a rush of seasickness and a bitter chill and Evelyn succumbed to the hemorrhaging while the doctors rushed around to stem the bleeding. Evelyn laughed to herself, chuckled at the metaphor as she nearly bled to death in that maternity ward while Richard carried their baby off just as she had predicted.

 

She hated the way the little one looked at her, beady-eyed, shark-eyed, distasteful. India would not breastfeed, would not suffer Evelyn holding her. When Richard was not around, Evelyn withstood the violence of India’s colic. Evelyn was blessed with a little girl as she wanted but cursed with a little girl who could not stand her. She found she also could not stand the infant who was so unlike her. In a matter of weeks, Evelyn relented to the impending postpartum depression and retreated from her child emotionally and physically.

 

Richard’s lukewarm attempts to reconnect the two left everyone miserable, and after a while, he stopped trying.

 

Evelyn threw in the towel completely when she discovered India would speak full and open sentences to her father but refused to utter even an indignant no to her own mother.

 

She felt like a horrible mother. She grew more anxious, more frightened of her uncertain future as the divide grew between mother and daughter.

 

Evelyn believed India looked at her as if she was only meant to be eaten, only meant for the slaughter. And Richard condemned her for such thoughts. So Evelyn returned to her antidepressant and antianxiety regimen, took up day drinking, and left behind her fantasies about a loving husband and adoring children and her perfect life in Stoker manor. It was better for her that way, to turn a blind eye, to let her daughter and her husband be. Remaining oblivious is what kept her alive as long as it did, until she wasn’t, until her eyes were opened completely when Charlie leaned into India at the top of the spiraling steps. She saw and then she ceased to be.

 

Perhaps that was why I could not bring myself to love my mother as I should have. She was never going to see, and if she did, she would never understand, and it would be a horror all around if she was allowed to live with that misunderstood knowledge.

 

There is a sizeable brown stain on her rich blue dress, crusted where she is still lying in the dried pool of her own blood. The fabric is ruined, useless. Creatures are growing in the exit wound in her blasted skull. Her skin has taken on that sickly gray hue reserved for the dead, clay-like. Rigor mortis has left her and now she will begin to melt into the hardwood floors, the stains irremovable, her body bloating as she decays. Her room, usually smelling like jasmine and sandalwood, now holds the pungent, overripe smell of rot, sweet in all the wrong ways.

 

I think with a little pity, not so fashionable now. And then it hurts, a minute ache sitting in the center of my chest. Crossing the room, careful of her body, I take a seat at the bench before her antique vanity, a family heirloom she inherited from her great grandmother. My mother had her perfume professionally and specially designed, believed it set her above the generic riff raff sporting Dior or Chanel. I run my fingers over the bottle depleted by half, the last gift my father gave to her using the special recipe. Unstopping the bottle and sliding out the glass dropper, tipped with a few drops of oil, I dab it on my pulse points, the wrists, next to the carotids that subtly throb just beneath the skin. It is nearly enough to briefly cover up the rotten smell wafting from her corpse not ten feet away.

 

‘You were supposed to love me.’

 

Regret hurts, hurts. If only she had stayed oblivious, we would have left without a word, without a rifle shell tearing through the thin walls of Stoker manor, without ruining her tasteful dress, soaking her subtle cleavage with the visceral red of oxygenated blood. She would have had everything else. She would have had her clean slate.

 

“She was only prey,” he tells me from the open door.

 

“Just like all the others, right?”

 

He nods like it should be obvious, leaning against the frame with his arms folded, one leg crossed over the other and his pant legs are perfectly pleated, freshly ironed after the soggy disaster in the school restroom.

 

“We need to start preparing.”

 

“Do we?” I cannot help sounding snide.

 

His features harden, then attempt to smooth out and remain calm rather than abrasive. “Wasn’t that what we had planned?”

 

When I fail to respond, he decides to ignore it and do what he was set on doing before he found me in here. I see the camping blanket at his feet, the fresh rug and a jug of ammonium hydroxide. Before he can kneel down and start wrapping my rotting mother in the blanket, I don’t realize I have crossed the room until my open hand is snapping across his cheek with a resounding clap, hard enough the bones in my palm feel bruised.

 

He can be just as quick when he snatches my offending wrist and yanks me out into the hall to put some distance between myself and the corpse. I hit him again with my free hand, reminding him I can be just as forceful with the other. The struggle that ensues is more painful than the regret that keeps ricocheting around in my chest. He can do so much worse but he chooses to restrain himself, and I don’t want him to. I want him to hurt me back. I want him to inflict damage, because his damage would be so much more meaningful than the petty damage done to me by Whip and Pitts.

 

When I kick him in the shin, he barely releases a groan and wrestles me to the ground underneath him, takes both my wrists in his hands and pins my arms to the hardwood.

 

I didn’t want to kill my mother, but the situation forced my hand. I had to choose between the loose-end mother and an end to loneliness, the infinity in loneliness. I felt weak for choosing Charlie. But unlike my mother, I craved the uncertainty I saw in him. It was the road less traveled, the harder decision, the most frightening. In Charlie was possibility, the stuff of living.

 

I am still writhing and twisting underneath him, trying to get leverage with my legs splayed around his hips, but his weight and his grip bear down on me. When he goes to kiss me, I turn my head to the side, and he sighs, placing his forehead against my cheek. I can feel where sweat has broken out on his tight brow, damp against my burning cheek.

 

The sound that breaks from my throat is animal, painful, a vestige of the fractured love I could barely muster for my mother, my poor mother.

 

Angry – I was angry with my mother. I was angry that she was weak, angry there were remnants of her weakness in me. I was angry that she expected too much of me, that she had nothing to offer me, that she failed to love me. I was not surprised when she told me she hoped the world would tear me apart. It was a common theme in our relationship, her bitterness, our mutual distaste for one another. I wanted to love her, but it was as if there was always something separating us, like two magnets with opposite poles. Never the twain shall meet.

 

The veins in my temples are near to bursting as my head pulses from the exertion, the fervency in the struggle. Charlie’s strength never wanes, keeps me firmly grounded, keeps me with him. Will he never let me go?

 

“Charlie.”

 

He lifts his head, his brow sweaty, his look concerned. The look I return is enough, and his mouth is affirmed and certain and wanting laid over mine. His grip loosens, and I slide my hands out to run them along the back of his neck, along the taut shoulders. One hand strays from the beaten path down his chest, feels his stomach tremble from the touch, fingers slowly undoing the sturdy leather belt, Charlie’s favorite belt, his special weapon. Charlie doesn’t miss a beat when his hands find the hem of my dress, sliding the skirt up to the top of my thighs. The bridge of his slacks is broken, shimmying them down just enough to get at what I really want, what I am not afraid of. He seems to weigh the pros and cons of what comes next, but his next action is brutal and determined when his hands wrench the seams of my panties apart and he pulls the torn fabric away.

 

I know it will hurt. I know it will damage me.  

 

I hear the vague whistling tune of the lonely man in the garden, casually strolling down the school halls, unhurried but sure of his direction. Charlie sees no limit to being, is not concerned with the petty fears that plague lesser lambs, stares willingly into the indifferent abyss. I was all he ever wanted. He would not stop, would not end. 

 

We have not done this before but we are not dumb beasts, not uninformed laymen.

 

There is blood and a deep, tearing pain. I feel broken but grateful I am broken, finally broken open.

 

So, it hurts, and Charlie knows it, but he pushes on, harder, powerful, as if he means it to hurt more than it should, as if he knows I want it to hurt that way. He kisses me meanly. His hands wrench open the front of my dress, and he is thankful for the easy access after the thin linen gives. Charlie bites and presses bruises in all the wrong and wonderful places and the violence in his movements never let up. It seems to go on forever, on and on, there on the hardwood floor outside my mother’s bedroom where she lies cold and horridly bloated, but Charlie is alive, alive, alive because I let him live. Was I alive before Charlie?

 

Charlie guides my legs to wrap around his hips, to bring us closer. He removes his shirt to bring our skin flush, to bring us back to what we were, what we were supposed to be, to negate all my father’s wishes and slaughter my mother’s hopes. The heels of my well-worn saddle shoes are digging into his lower back, and he smiles as he realizes the welcomed discomfort. His hand tangles in my dark dark brown hair, a shade that nearly mirrors his own. There is similarity in our bone structures, a likeness between the veiled emptiness in my eyes and the predatory gleam of his, the makeup of our bodies aligning near perfectly.

 

Something that was never meant to be but must happen – was that what my father feared?

 

His movements grow erratic as he tears a path into me. I try to bring him closer, just a little more, and he accepts, attempts to go one step further but it seems impossible, an impossible closeness. Too much all at once and he is kissing me when he goes, consuming and pulling and tearing, and it feels akin to chaos.

 

I don’t think about the consequences. I don’t think about my dead mother fifteen feet away. I don’t think about my father and the body we never got to bury and the reasons why. I cannot think about the body count trailing behind both of us, piling ever higher as the days progress.

 

Something that was never meant to be but must happen, will happen, already has. No one can change that, and I will not stop.


	5. Lo and Behold

The shovel penetrates the dark soil abruptly, the sole of his shoe coming down on the shoulder of the blade to shove it deeper. He works with no special hurry sliding the blade in, pressing it down, moving moderate shovelfuls to the side. Charlie only stops briefly to wipe the sweat from his forehead, off the tip of his nose, and to look at me for a moment. He looks at me and seems calm, the blue of his eyes no longer chaotic, no longer morbidly amused or smug. He just seems still.

 

I lean back against the stone sphere, the largest one in the garden. He must have reserved it for her to honor me but it wasn’t necessary. The stone is smooth and cold and final, a lead weight to keep the dead where they belong.

 

Behind the greenhouse he finally buried Mrs. McGarrick, believing that leaving her in the basement top-loading freezer was sloppy and risky. So he had drug her frigid dried-up corpse to the greenhouse in the woods before he had come for my mother. He is so careful to tie up loose-ends.

 

We have made a massacre of our ancestry, I realize. But, I believe it is better to start there since you can control the story much better. You are the foremost expert on your family’s comings and goings, their habits and idiosyncrasies. Few would question your authority on the matter. So, I can say my mother has gone to a retreat up north in Maine, and no one will press further, considering she is a well-known neurotic and a frequent flyer of Prozac nation. I can explain Auntie Gin accompanied her to offer extra familial support in my mother’s time of grief.

 

Whip was a flighty boy with a motorcycle about to graduate high school. No one would be surprised if he suddenly up and left, off the grid.

 

Mrs. McGarrick was getting old, set to retire. And with my mother leaving for Maine and myself graduating high school, the kindly lady decided to quit her longstanding post as caretaker of Stoker Manor and retreat to live in elderly comfort somewhere warmer.

 

Funny, isn’t it? How people just disappear like that? But, it isn’t all that surprising. People come and go all the time, my uncle and I included. The world is such a big place, easy to get lost in.

 

A berm of dirt is rising up around Charlie as he sinks deeper and deeper into the earth. Once his head is just above the soil-line, he decides it is enough. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just believable. He heaves himself up out of the hole, standing over the rolled up rug swaddling my dead mother.

 

“Want to say goodbye?” he wonders.

 

I pull blades of grass one-by-one from the ground, the dew collecting on my fingers. First one and then another, languidly blinking lights float across the lawn, dipping and dozing here and there. It looks like Morse code, like there is some hidden message in those carefully and patiently timed flickers. I cannot decipher if it is a warning or a congratulation. The lights of the fireflies are unhurried, patient in their pursuit of the company of other fireflies, as if sure they will find another eventually. Doesn’t matter when; it will happen.

 

“There’s no point,” I tell him, watching a firefly land on my bare knee, feeling the gentlest wisp of its delicate legs and admiring its measured florescence.

 

Unceremonious, Charlie pushes his foot against the rug and rolls my mother into the fresh hole. I don’t see her hit the bottom but I hear the dull thud. Charlie starts to shovel soil into the hole, whistling to himself. I move to crawl across the grass, disrupting the firefly who abandons its perch and flutters up into the damp night air. My hands begin to push dirt into the grave. It only seems appropriate, I think, that I should be the one to help bury my mother.

 

With assistance, the burying proceeds quickly, the berm reduced, my mother adequately hidden. It takes both of us to roll the sphere over her grave, and considering the ground is loose, it sinks in too noticeably. So, Charlie builds up a moat of dirt around it, partially burying it in the ground as if that is the purpose of the garden decoration.

 

Both of us are filthy and exhausted and hurting. Charlie’s cheek is showing signs of a bruise from where I struck him. My own face has several phases of healing painting it. I feel raw between my legs and my thighs are sore. I am not wearing any underwear and my dress is torn and revealing. Charlie’s shirt is gone and his pants are soiled with dirt. I think, destruction breeds creation, so it must be necessary. I don’t feel torn apart but renewed. With my mother nearly six feet beneath our dirty feet, I receive the clean slate she never got.

 

* * *

 

 

“To the city?” I asked.

 

“You’ve been to New York before haven’t you?” he wondered.

 

I shook my head. I had never left the manor before, never been outside Connecticut before. I couldn’t bring myself to leave the country, leave the forest, couldn’t even cross the train tracks.

 

“Richard, he set up an apartment for me on the Upper East side of Manhattan, a one bedroom on the fifth floor. We will be comfortable there before we move on to wherever you want to go. I’ve never been to New York before either. I think we would have fun there for a time. What do you think?” he explains.

 

His shoulder feels so warm pressed up against my own. The piano bench is barely large enough for the two of us. Both sets of hands rest idly on the ivory keys, his right pinky brushing against my left one.

 

“Like an adventure. It will be an adventure.” I lean ever so slightly into him.

 

“It will be our adventure,” he urges, leaning in turn.

 

“We will see everything?”

 

“As long as it takes,” he assures me. “Once more?” He gestures towards the silent keys. And so, I start the opening chords. He doesn’t bother with a cue and barrels in as he has always done.

 

* * *

 

 

We are speeding down the country highway leading out of town, the top down on the Jaguar, my hair as unruly and wild as ever. Charlie’s hand clutches the stick shift firmly and surely. He is wearing my father’s sunglasses and smiling contentedly.

 

“Do you know what this feels like?” I ask him, shouting over the roar of the wind.

 

He glances at me and grins. “What?”

 

“Humble Humbert and Lo.”

 

He laughs. “You are not twelve years old.”

 

“You loved me when I was twelve years old,” I reason.

 

“I loved you when you were just a dream. And, I will love you when we are old and dead and gone,” he declares. He goes quiet for a moment, contemplating the topic, before wondering. “But, Lo never loved Humble Humbert. Is that how this is? Do you not love me, India?”

 

I smile at the worry lines forming on his brow, because even after this past month he cannot be too sure. Even with having me in the passenger seat, buckled in, leaving the comfort of Stoker Manor for the first time, he still doubts my intentions, my reasons. I place my hand over his white knuckles now gripping the stick shift in a vice.

 

“Pull over up here,” I command, helping him shift lower, the convertible rolling to a stop under a tunnel of drooping willow branches. I kill the engine for him and unbuckle both our seat belts. “Back here,” I order, grabbing his collar and yanking us both into the back seat. I lie down on the plush leather, naked knees parted and flanking his hips, scraping along his leather belt. He puts his hands on the outsides of my thighs, bared by the skirt pooling at my hips. His fingers play with the soft flowing fabric, nearly translucent save for the blotches of inked blood-orange poppies.

 

His eyes are closed and his jaw is locked, lips tight. “This doesn’t answer my question.”

 

I sit up and put my mouth to his ear. “It should.” My fingers find his buckle, deftly undoing it in swift jerking motions. He sighs, his whole body deflating as the belt slides through its loops from the safety of his hips. I offer him the belt. “Do it.” And him being him, he will always know what I mean.

 

I lift my head so he can loop the belt around my neck. Gathering my hair atop my crown, I feel the leather settle against the nape of my neck. He pulls the tip through the buckle. His eyes, so blue and bright and chaotic, hold mine as the noose grows tighter and tighter around my neck, pinching the delicate skin. I feel my eyes go tight, tongue swollen, vessels in my head bursting, a surging ache swelling like a wave in the front of my skull. The world starts tunneling and I cannot help gasping for a bit of air but none comes. I vaguely register his free hand on the inside of my thigh, creep crawling upward. His knuckles brush the front of my cotton panties and my hips roll up into him involuntarily.

 

“My sweet little Lo,” he whispers, but his voice sounds so far away, like he is speaking from the leaves in the trees.

 

His fingers curls under the elastic of my panties, searching within, and I try to whimper but no air can get through. He has sealed my windpipe shut. His digits are slip sliding, and I smile weakly, because there is no better way to show my love. I feel him work languidly between my legs. My eyes are glued to the sunlight through the trees, everything fuzzy and hazy like looking at the world through ether.

 

Suddenly, the tension eases from around my throat and I unconsciously suck in as much air as I can muster, throat raw and sore but pulling in oxygen at an alarming rate. I thought I would hyperventilate, but any further thoughts sink to the back of my mind when he pushes in. I am still slightly sore from the day before, but coupled with my excitement and his aggressive strokes, firm Rachmaninov digits, it felt easier, more enjoyable. While I could breathe and function, I quickly unbuttoned his shirt so I could run my hands along his torso, and still he ran as hot as ever. With a particularly fervid thrust the noose tightened around my neck, cutting off my exploration, and I dug my nails into the tender flesh at his sides, feeling him shudder with the reaction. I reach up blindly feeling for his throat, and as soon as my fingers brush over his solid Adam’s apple, I curl my hand around his neck, weakly mimicking his belt around my own throat.

 

“That’s my girl, India.” His voice rasps from somewhere. I feel raw all over. His breath is hot under my chin. It is the first time the world ceases to be sharp and focused, where everything fades to the background besides him. Small stars burst across my vision, the edges going black. I feel like my head will pop straight off my body like the game I played with dandelions as a child.

 

Mama had a baby and its head popped off.

 

I feel something vaguely familiar burning and coiling and tingling in my lower belly, and instinctively, my thighs tighten around him, toes curling. I can hear Charlie grunting, groaning, feel his movements growing increasingly erratic. The vice around my neck gets ever tighter and I feel my vision going black but not before the world surges white and I choke on my orgasm, silent and violent.

 

“Charlie, I’m gonna have to ask you to release Ms. India and get out of the car slowly with your hands where I can see them.”

 

I barely register the identity of that voice, collapsed beneath my uncle, prostrate with the belt still looped around my neck.

 

Gradually my vision stops swimming and I gaze up at Charlie, who iss looking at someone standing by the car. I try to ask him who it is, but my voice refuses to come.

 

“Sheriff, this is all just a small misunderstanding. It isn’t what it looks like,” Charlie attempts to explain. His hands are resting on the side of the car, leaving the noose loose around my throat. I realize my breathing is shallow, calm, almost like I am about to fall asleep.

 

“What does it look like to you, Mr. Stoker?” the sheriff asks gruffly and he must have his pistol aimed at Charlie because my uncle is stock still and tense above me.

 

Charlie chuckles and shrugs his shoulders. “Well, Sheriff, it must look like I am sexually assaulting and strangling my niece with a belt. It looks pretty cut and dry doesn’t it?”

 

“Get out of the car, Charlie,” the sheriff orders again.

 

My uncle sighs. “Yeah, give me a moment. It’s a little cramped back here.” Charlie pulls back, letting my legs fall closed. “Make myself more decent for you, Sheriff.” I hear him zip his pants back up, but he doesn’t reach for his belt. He clamors over me, hopping out of the car lithe like a big cat.

 

“Step away from the car, Charlie. Get down on the ground with your hands on your head. Slowly. Don’t move from there.” I can hear the sheriff’s boots clunking across the ground and then the clinking of handcuffs.

 

I sit up gingerly. Everything feels raw and aching, but all the stress has been drained from every joint and muscle. The world is the clearest it has ever been. I slide the belt from around my neck. The sheriff is knelt over Charlie’s prone form laid out on the pavement with handcuffs being locked around his wrists, his Miranda rights read out to him succinctly with not a little bitterness.

 

“You haven’t even taken full stock of the situation yet, Sheriff. Don’t you think you are getting ahead of yourself,” Charlie tries to reason.

 

I climb quietly out of the backseat with the belt in my hands. Charlie is looking at me sideways from the ground and smiling smug. I don’t even hesitate to think of the consequences when I wrap the belt around Sheriff Howard’s neck and drag him off my uncle. I push my weight down on him, causing him to crack his face against the tar black. Charlie is upright within a few seconds, one wrist cuffed with the rest hanging. He watches me choke Sheriff Howard with that crooked, awkward boyish grin, observes how the officer’s eyes bulge not unlike my own just a few minutes ago. The sheriff writhes violently, throwing his weight around on the ground and almost overpowering me, but I yank back like I saw my uncle do all those months ago to Whip, and with his back arched like that and the leather stripping his throat, he loses leverage. But, Charlie comes around behind me, his arms reaching along my sides. His mouth is against my ear but he doesn’t say anything, and his chest is bare against my shoulders. I think he is going to wrap his hands around the belt and take over, but instead, I hear a strange ripping sound and then warmth is flooding over my fingers from where Charlie has gouged open the sheriff’s carotid with the open metal cuff. The sheriff gurgles and rasps abnormally.

 

“Give it a minute,” Charlie assures me, and then his fingers are wrapping around the belt with mine and with his added strength, we both pull backwards firmly. “Let him bleed out. Don’t break his neck.”

 

“Why not?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper and hoarse from the strangle hold before.

 

“It’s slower. More enjoyable this way. Feels nice doesn’t it? The blood on your hands. Still warm.” And, he is right.

 

“Charlie,” I murmur reverently.

 

“I love you,” he sighs into my hair. “I won’t ask you about it again.”

 

Sheriff Howard goes limp beneath me, so I let the belt slide from around his neck, the worn leather soaked through and our hands just the same. Charlie curls his hand along my jaw, his thumb brushing along my cheekbone and smearing red across my contented features, unflinching before this stochastic gore. His movements are slow and languid, his lips fitting over mine just right and his tongue easing over my own, a reverence in his actions that puts a dull ache beneath my sternum.

 

With this he could be sure.


	6. the Hunter and the Game

With time and shifting perspective anyone can make a heaven of hell and vice versa. It did not take long for Charlie to discover he could live his entire life inside his head with only his fantasies for company. The others wanted to pull him from his ruminations, wanted him to voice his fantasies and dissect them for their own objectives at his expense. He did not want attention from the others. He only ever wanted from one. But, now he figured if he could not gain the affection nor even the attention of that one, he would recede into the recesses of his mind and live there comfortably. Unlike the others, Charlie wasn’t afraid of the darker nooks and crannies in his head. He liked those spaces best.

 

Richard never tried to dissect Charlie. At least, not before. And not really after. Before, Richard saw Charlie as his odd younger brother, prone to moody violent outbursts like many little boys but also manic and energetic in between. Charlie had an aversion to touch, but he never minded when Richard would rough around with him, would guide him by the shoulder, would help lift him to retrieve a paper airplane from a tree branch. Only Richard had the privilege, and that was what Charlie considered it – a privilege.

 

Before Jonathon, Richard thought Charlie represented a normal kid brother. And then there was Jonathon – bright, giggly, innocent toe-headed Jonathon. Jonathon never hurt anyone. He didn’t torment ants or hit the dog. Jonathon never said things that made the adults uncomfortable or suspicious. Jonathon loved affection, loved to be held and hugged and played with. While Charlie sucked the air from the room, Jonathon breathed life into it. And it was painfully clear to Richard there was a difference. For Richard, it was easy to love Jonathon.

 

So, Richard loved Jonathon to the point of neglecting the privilege Charlie had given him.

 

The change was visible in Richard. Charlie buried their little brother alive and expressed no remorse, no regret, but pride, accomplishment, satisfaction with his private revenge. Before, Richard tolerated and even held some measure of affection for his younger brother Charlie. After all Richard knew Charlie loved him, in his own awkward way.

 

After, Richard wondered if he had encouraged something twisted in Charlie by willfully neglecting him for the easier Jonathon. Richard couldn’t help feeling he was at fault. He left the two alone together because while he knew Charlie could be thoughtlessly cruel, he never imagined the violence he could enact on his own kin. He underestimated Charlie. He resolved himself to never do that again. Richard exiled Charlie to Crawford for his own good, but some part of him knew that might be worse, might twist him further. He had no idea how much.

 

Perhaps Richard never attempted to piece apart Charlie’s motivations and machinations because they were always obvious to him.

 

For years at Crawford Charlie lived inside his head. He returned to Stoker manor for the holidays and told his relatives how much he was enjoying boarding school, regaled made-up stories of baseball game heroics and boyhood pranks in the dorms. Richard marveled at how easily Charlie lied about his life, and Charlie marveled at how effortlessly the others swallowed it up. It was easier for them to believe the cliched fantasies. It was easier for them to believe Jonathon was an accident and Charlie didn’t understand what he was doing.

 

It started to become clear to Charlie there was a game to be played. Before Jonathon, Charlie never censured himself. He knew he made the others uncomfortable, but he thought it was their problem, not his. He still believed that, but to get at what he wanted, he had to play the game. And he learned to play it well with the others. Charlie found it easy to revert to the default of politeness.

 

Charlie was still at Crawford when India was born, still living inside his head.

 

Richard visited him on occasion to tell him the family news, check in on him, show some vague interest in his life at Crawford. Charlie recalled Richard getting married, remembers seeing the gold wedding band on his ring finger, but it had passed by him like a dream, like someone else’s dream. Charlie had learned to play the game, but he had not learned well enough to fool Richard. For that reason, Charlie remained at Crawford. So, Charlie resigned himself to the universe inside his mind and dissociated almost completely. He knew Richard preferred him this way, separated physically and mentally from everyone, from Richard and his new wife and his new life. Charlie could play the game with the others, but he never played for them. He played for Richard, so he played it like this.

 

The world continued to pass by Charlie while he languished in his personal No Exit. He did not want for all the creature comforts, but nothing comforted him, not his baby Grand Richard finally brought to him from Stoker manor, not the complete Encyclopedia Britannica, not the French tutors. Nothing could comfort Charlie in the endless numbered days at Crawford. Charlie paced like a caged cat until the door would open to some ward with meds or therapist or removed family member, and Charlie would become like a mirror, pull on that perfectly planned person suit. The only one he didn’t have to wear the suit with was Richard.

 

Nothing ever hurt Charlie. He always felt so far removed from everyone and everything. He never felt any pain until Richard would come. And then it hurt all over, and Charlie would dissociate, withdraw inside himself to the fantasies that placated him.

 

Charlie remembers the day his heart started beating again, when he finally felt like a real boy again.

 

Mrs. McGarrick blessed him with one of her rare clandestine visits. She brought him dried lavender from her garden, because the teas she made him as a child always seemed to sooth him. She brought him photos of Richard and his new wife and the newly renovated Stoker manor. Charlie genuinely appreciated her visits, and he put on his best person suit when she came to keep her coming. These peeks into Richard’s life outside of Crawford – Charlie latched onto them, savored every little insight and memorized each colored grain of every photograph. She showed him Richard and Evelyn’s wedding photo, images of the reception at Stoker manor, the honeymoon in the south of France, the two dancing at some charity event or playing tennis. And then, Evelyn just beginning to show, a proud Richard kneeling next to her with his hand on her expanding belly, and it occurs to Charlie that Richard has become a man. His older brother is now a man with a wife and a child on the way and a job and a house. He has this whole separate life of which Charlie isn’t even a background thought.

 

“She was born just last week,” Mrs. McGarrick tells Charlie and shows her the next few photographs. Richard holding a bundle of pale pink blankets with a little, pinker-faced infant buried inside them, beady-eyed and solemn-faced. “Evelyn and the baby are staying in the hospital for another week just to make sure everything is alright. Evelyn had a mishap after the birth, but she is recovering, getting better everyday,” Mrs. McGarrick explains.

 

“What is her name?” Charlie wonders, studying the way Richard is looking at the little girl.

 

“India.” Mrs. McGarrick shows another picture of Richard and India together in Evelyn’s hospital room. “She is such a quiet baby. She reminds me so much of you when you were born, never cries, never fusses, barely coos. She didn’t even cry when she was born; the doctors were worried for a moment.”

 

“She is coming home next week,” Charlie queries. Mrs. McGarrick says that is the plan. “There will be a party.” Charlie figures this on his own, and Mrs. McGarrick says she is already planning it. Charlie knows it is custom. They had a party when Jonathon came home from the hospital. “I’d like to get her a present. Would you bring it to her for me?”

 

Mrs. McGarrick smiles like she is in on a secret.

 

As soon as Mrs. McGarrick leaves, Charlie takes a seat on the bench and flips up the key cover. He rests his fingertips ever so lightly on the ivory keys and lets his eyes drift closed. He starts at the lower notes where he has always felt most comfortable in the more solemn moments. Slowly he recalls the last time Richard visited him and how there was no mention of Evelyn’s pregnancy, not a hint of anything so momentous as that.

 

“What are you hiding, Richard?” Charlie whispers to himself as he abruptly shifts to higher tones and lifts up the tempo.

 

India ink smells of phenol, reminiscent of those poisonous mushrooms resembling their choice and edible cousins. India beautiful and elegant like the ink, but with the unmistakable odor of something to be feared. He uses India ink to pen the letters and the cards on her presents, hopes the smell will linger in the paper, ferment inside the envelopes.

 

Mrs. McGarrick kept him updated on the growing up of India Stoker. She told him everything Richard would withhold, and she faithfully delivered his present every year in the exact way he ordered. Make it a game, make her work for it, make her hunt. He knew she would like that, would like the hunt. Every prediction he made about her came true, and he so loved to be right.

 

Each time Richard would visit, Charlie would ask about India, ask about some event or happening that Richard had never told Charlie, that Richard had to figure out how he knew. And Charlie would deliver some insight that always hit closer to home than Richard would have liked. Richard could feel the tide receding, the veneer of calm seas before the inevitable rush. It was painfully plain to Richard that Charlie would always know India better than himself, no matter the time and distance between them. So, Richard took advantage of that unfounded but natural knowledge and used it to raise his daughter, to understand his daughter better, to right the mistakes he had made with Charlie, to keep her from being a Crawford inmate, too. Charlie didn’t mind. He found it amusing, empowering, satisfying, and – comforting.

 

He only wrote half the song then. He figured she would fill in the rest when she was ready. Charlie knew he only needed to be patient.

 

When he saw her effortlessly deflect the tepid and amateur threats of Pitts with nothing but a sharpened No.2, Charlie knew she was ready. In the weeks since he had arrived at Richard’s wake, India let him know bit by bit. Each happy surprise comforted Charlie, rewarded him for his years of blind hope.

 

He heard her start. It was easy for him to chime in. That song he had begun to write all that time ago – it lined up perfectly with hers, their duet. He tested her with the abrupt change in tempo, and she recovered seamlessly with her own melody.

 

And when Charlie slung his arm along her shoulders to reach the higher notes, they switched without a hitch. His thumb brushed her little finger every now and again as they shared a key, and each time his heart would flutter with just that barest brushing of skin on skin. Leaning forward, his pressed his chest to her back. Even through the layers of clothing, he could feel the warmth there between her shoulder blades like wings tensed, and her heart beating as fast as his, thumping like a little bird against the cage of her ribs. His eyes slid closed to hold that image of her racing heart in his mind, letting muscle memory take over his hands. A whimper breaking through the song, a caught breath, a pleasured sigh. Charlie feels alive, complete in that moment to fulfill her lifetime of longing.

 

She resists at the same time she gives in, and Charlie savors it, relishes and celebrates her closeness. Had she ever allowed anyone else this much closeness, so much for the both of them?

 

Not yet, he tells himself. Soon. So very soon. Before he can commit himself to going further, he pulls his hands sharply from the keys, cuts the melody off before its big finish. India looks disappointed, so close just a moment before. Her thighs relax, still breathless, and he wants to commit himself further, bring them to the climax they have waited years for. But, it is not yet, not now. Soon. Charlie has been patient this long. He can be patient just a bit longer. Patience is all he needs, all he requires, and he will get his reward. Charlie will no longer have to live inside his head. He can live with India.

 

Charlie thought his heart’s race had reached its acme that afternoon of their first duet. But it was the changing of the shoes ceremony where his pulse peaked and then fluttered down to a pacific pace. As soon as he slipped the crocodile leather over the last blushing sole, he had never felt more at peace. India looked just as she had at the end of their duet, breathless and swooning. He knew no one else could make her heady like that. He prided himself on being allowed that privilege and he would never allow it to go to waste. India was meant to be cherished. Even Richie knew as much.

 

Charlie relished the look of alarm on Evelyn’s face, white as a sheet, panic-stricken and still recovering from the dregs of a pharmaceutically induced hangover. He loved that sick surprise distorting the features of his fools, enjoyed his personal checkmate. Even after that special ceremony, after Evie witnessed the marathon duet, she continued to delude herself. She charmed Charlie up to her bedroom, and he dutifully played his part of the charmed, playacted his plan all along was to leave India behind and take Evelyn away from her little birdie cage. Charlie couldn’t believe how easy it was to get her on the ground, this poor lamb Richard had married with no backbone, no grit, nothing of India in her. It almost felt unfair when he got his leather belt around her pale neck, watching the flush that rose so easily underneath the nearly translucent skin she had passed onto her daughter.

 

Had Charlie’s heart ever beat before he saw India. He remembers the thrill of burying Jonathon, that heady excitement as he formed a sand angel over the little boy’s shallow grave. He did not enjoy killing Richie. The thought alone made him ill to his stomach, but it was nothing he could not overcome for the promise of India. No, it was always the promise of India that got his heart beating, his blood pumping double time.

 

There was just one more step necessary. For he and India to become. India slid the rifle from its leather case, raised it so expertly to her shoulder and took aim.

 

Since then, still sometimes, Charlie feels a reverberation of something alternate. He rubs his neck agitated, feels ill and lightheaded and betrayed. It could have gone so differently.

 

India has been avoiding him all week.

 

At first he believed it was because she did not like New York. The obvious contrast between Stoker Manor and the city was jarring to the both of them. Charlie had only imagined what the noise would be like, but once he arrived he realized the constant background static was very similar to the chaotic cacophony that perturbed him during his most manic episodes. It was a sensory overload for both Charlie and India, nonetheless, so Charlie reasoned India needed an adjustment period. He gave her the space she didn’t need to ask for, even though it irritated him to be away from her.

 

Charlie feels miles from India though they share the same space, the same bed and bathroom and kitchen. He wakes up to her playing piano every morning just as the sun is starting to peek between the skyscrapers. His hand splays along the indentation where her body lay just moments before, absorbs the fleeting warmth she left behind. Her Beethoven’s Appassionata is flawless, but it sends him a message less than comforting. She has not duetted with him in days, and he is starting to feel something like withdrawal, something he has only felt once or twice in his life when his psychiatrist would pull him off a medication he didn’t realize his body had grown too used to. Charlie never needed anyone. He never wanted to touch anyone. But he needs to touch India. Yet, he knows she does not need him.

 

She continues the Appassionata Sonata as Charlie steps into the clawfoot tub and cranks the faucet knobs, withstands the scalding shower across the back of his neck and shoulders to mask the anger flushing there. He leans his forehead against the wall, the plastic shower curtain placing a hazy film over his eyes. Why can he never see so clearly without her? A groan escapes his throat before he can swallow it and he grinds his forehead into the wall.

 

Charlie has felt like this before. For weeks the feeling boiled in his gut, something that should never surface in a little boy. The feeling reached its apex just before he decided to guide Jonathon up the slide steps. And it disappeared as soon as Charlie sprawled across the sand, feeling the fine grit against the backs of his hands, child’s hands that could do something that momentous, powerful.

 

“You said you didn’t regret it,” Charlie challenges. Washed and coifed and dressed to a neatly crossed T.

 

India doesn’t respond, her hands folded neatly in her lap as she stares under the hood across the piano strings.

 

“You said you couldn’t forgive me,” Charlie remembers. “India.”

 

India can dissociate as readily as Charlie himself; he knows this. But, he never imagined she would dissociate from him.

 

“You’ll never forgive me,” Charlie concludes. “We’ll always come back to this same place.”

 

Charlie feared that. After he killed Richard, he knew there was a chance India would not react well, but he had reconciled with himself to never withhold the truth from her. If she asked him what happened, he would tell her and tell her he did, without blinking, without looking away. He bore that slap readily without flinching. Yet, she shot her mother anyway. She let him touch her anyway. She came with him anyway. They had killed three people together. When they killed together, they killed beautifully and they were good at it – together.

 

Charlie realizes his thoughts are scrambling, scratching at any comforting memory he can get ahold of before India tells him she is leaving him. He would rather she kill him.

 

“I’m his daughter,” she finally says as if this phrase is enough, holds all the information Charlie needs to understand her, and he does and doesn’t.

 

Charlie can feel his features cracking, the mania bubbling up from his usual charming visage.

 

“I’m not playing the game with you,” he promises. “I’m not playing it, India. I never needed to. We play the game against all the rest, don’t we?”

 

“You played it with my father, didn’t you? Isn’t that how you killed him?”

 

Charlie laughs and chokes on it. “I never could play the game with Richie,” Charlie admits. “He always saw right through it. Just like you. I couldn’t play with Richie, so I cheated and took him out of the game. It didn’t matter how good I was. I was good for so long, India. I thought if I was good long enough, if I could convince all the others how good I was, Richard would finally believe it, too, and he would let me come back. I killed Richard when I realized he was never going to let me come back.”  


Charlie is quiet for a moment, moving a thought around on his tongue before telling India, “You know, India, he thought of sending you to Crawford, too. He knew one day you’d slip up and do something stupid like I did. He let you do something bad to keep you from doing something worse like killing all those animals just for sport. He hoped that would be enough for you, but make no mistake, if you had slipped up, he would have locked you up in an adjacent cell in a heartbeat.”

 

 “He wouldn’t do that. I’m his daughter,” she reasons like its truth.

 

Charlie shakes his head slowly at first before he starts whipping it back and forth. He tangles his hands in his hair, messing up that perfect coif to keep his head from shaking. “You were never his! You were always mine! Jonathon – I was envious of little Jonathon. Richie and Jonathon, two peas in a pod.” His tone calms suddenly. “But you – you were never his. I knew it then. Mrs. McGarrick only made that clearer, made it more fact than assumption. I didn’t have to see you to know. People can laugh and scoff at the ideas of fate and destiny, but they laugh and scoff because it is an unattainable thing to them, something they will never have the privilege of knowing.

 

“You and I, two peas in a pod. For so long I worried we would always be a prime pair. But there is a pair not separated, a lucky pair, a chance pair.” Charlie approaches her, stands behind her where she is still perched on the piano bench.

 

As if approaching a wild animal, Charlie slowly brings his hands to close over her shoulders, his spidery fingers encompassing so much. "You slow me down, India,” he whispers. “Everything becomes clear.”

 

India reaches up and touches his hand briefly before shrugging away from him. His hands drop to his sides like dead weights. She closes the key cover and stands up, still facing away from him, holding herself. It is just this progression of movements, the way each action influences the other like there are invisible threads linking their limbs to one another.

 

“India.”

 

She closes her eyes tightly and sees the burning SUV silhouetted by twilight. She counts the number of windows in the building opposite theirs. Theirs.

 

“India.”


	7. Appassionata

I rationalize with myself that if you are going to do bad you must commit yourself wholly to do bad. Make it an art form. Become a master of the worst. I rationalize with myself that it is better to rule in hell than serve in heaven. 

I did something worse instead of something bad. 

Something is off. Perhaps time and distance have made this more apparent. At first, there was the rush of the new uncertainty, the thrill of becoming what is most feared, the satisfaction of being known. But time and distance have replaced these feelings with something akin to guilt. It is a foreign discomfort to me, regret. With this regret has come something even more discomfiting – resentment. 

At some point in life your sense of direction forks so starkly, nearly violent in its divergence. I had two hands to play and I worry I may have played them wrong. The hand I chose feels right but in this rightness I feel wrong. 

As a child and later a young adult there was only one thing of which I was absolutely certain. There was only one person I was certain I loved. I was sure my father loved me. I was sure I loved my father. I knew my father was afraid of me, but even with this fear he never once shied away from me. He would not allow his fear to get the best of him. He was a man who kept his word, his commitment, that tacit oath to take responsibility as a father. Perhaps it was that unflinching familial love that allowed me to love him in return. Sometimes I think it was this love that blinded me of my father’s faults. 

I never had any trouble seeing my mother’s faults nor the faults of the others, relatives and classmates and the help. The faults of prey were always so clear to me, but that is to be expected. Sharks can smell blood a mile away; cougars can hear the distress call of the cottontail from the other side of the mountain. People like my mother were easy to read, imperfections on display. Somehow my father’s faults got lost in translation. 

I thought it was my father who gave me shoes on my birthday. Every year that happy surprise in a white shoe box with the goldenrod ribbon – it solidified that oblivious daughterly love. If had paid any objective attention I would have noticed the tightness behind my father’s smile every time he saw me in my new saddle shoes, the hint of bitterness in his voice when he asked if they fit alright, how well they suited me. When he returned from those trips he never explained, I would have felt him looking at me when I didn’t know it, would have sensed the guarded suspicion, the anxious worrying. 

I could see my father around holidays sifting through the mail for that characteristic penmanship, his keen nose picking up the scent of phenol from India ink. I could see my father seated at his desk with the envelope silent on the leather ink blotter, as if expecting it to bite. I could see my father holding the envelope in his hands and reading Charlie’s flawless calligraphy, noting the false address on the front and somehow relieved by the inconspicuous red stamp on the back assuring him his younger brother was right where he belonged. Every letter was opened when I found the stack in the locked drawer. So my father, without conscience, had slid the sterling silver letter opener easily through the envelope and read each one. Every one of Charlie’s secret messages to me was subject to my father’s judgment. 

What did my father see in those letters? With each new letter, did the words invoke some fresh fear? 

“Didn’t you ever wonder why I never wrote back?” I ask him with my back still turned. 

“I don’t question you, India,” Charlie declares, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. 

If I had paid any attention at all, I would have known whenever my father looked at me he was seeing Charlie in another form. 

Charlie loved Richard because his older brother understood him, but Richard treated his love for Charlie as an obligation. I loved my father because he understood me, but he never once treated me like a burden. 

My father always knew when it was time to go back into the woods. He would call me into his office to clean the rifles. I could smell the gun oil and the sharpness of the solvent and it was like a promise of what was to come. I liked how stiff the bristles were on the copper barrel brushes, how abrasive they were on my skin. I liked setting out all the pieces in descending order from which they would come back together again. I liked studying all the parts of what could take it all away, such simple parts made of metal and wood. And I oiled all the important parts with care, conscious of not putting too much oil on, avoiding the areas where no oil should go. My rifle was the most important thing I owned; it gave me the release I needed every so often. And that was what it was – a need. My father could sense that, so each time he called me into his den to the clean the rifles, it always seemed perfectly timed. 

I needed the hunt. I needed the stillness and the quiet, to disappear into the background. I needed the stalk, the infinite number of leaves and the everchanging clouds above. I needed the ache in my shoulders and lower back from lying on my stomach in the grass all day, the itch from grass tickling at my ears and neck. 

I needed the kill, the smell of the gun shot residue on my knuckles, the strike of the shell as it flipped up into the air with a wisp of smoke from the barrel, and that fresh spray of blood from something that was no longer beating. I needed the ringing in my ears, the buck of the stock hard against my shoulder. The body of the bird still warm in my hands, the vibrant plumage soft against my fingertips, the blood cooling as it drips through the feathers. 

I let myself enjoy it. I didn’t know how much my enjoyment perturbed my father. 

My father never gave me a choice where Charlie was concerned, because he knew which choice I would make. He was certain I would do something worse instead of something bad if Charlie were involved. Am I angry because I am not angry? Am I resentful because I am not regretful?

What were my father’s last thoughts? Did he think of little Jonathon buried under only two feet of sand, just enough to keep him under? Was he surprised? 

If I believed anything about my father it would be his utter lack of surprise when Charlie slid back into the SUV with a jagged rock balanced in the palm of his hand. If anyone was capable of unending familial love it was my father, in his nature to forgive and lean into the punches his family dealt him. My father forgave Charlie for killing Jonathon. I know that. But he never forgot. I imagine in his last moments my father even forgave Charlie for killing him, reached kindly for his younger brother to assure him everything was alright even as his skull caved in. 

The truth is I can always find faults where there are none. From his actions I can reason my father feared me. But it is also from those same actions I can conclude he loved me as selflessly and ungrudgingly as he was capable. Hindsight is 20/20, and I know my father did everything he could to ensure I would not end up like Charlie locked up in some mental ward for the better half of my life. My father was not afraid of me. He was afraid of what the world would try to do to me if they found out. He was afraid of what Charlie could bring out in me. 

What I worry about is what I know my father hoped as he slid into the nothing place that succeeds death. I know he hoped I would do something bad instead of something worse. 

“Do you regret killing him?” I ask finally, unsure if I want to know the answer. 

Charlie takes a step back and looks at his hands, as if seeing his brother’s blood still streaked across his palms. What did he think when he tossed that rock out into the river, watched that sharp black thing sail through the air and disappear into the rapids? “I didn’t want to do it if that is what you’re asking,” Charlie says so lowly it is nearly a whisper. “I wouldn’t have done it if he had just taken me home. I just wanted him to take me home, to let me meet you, India. He wouldn’t even allow me that much. He took me out of one prison just to send me into exile.” 

“How could you do it?” 

Charlie chuckles to himself, wrings his hands in front of him as if washing the blood off in an imaginary sink. “You should know better than anybody.” 

“Didn’t you love him?” 

Charlie’s eyes go wide and he has to laugh again to keep from getting angry. “What do you think of this new prison cell, India?” he wonders, gesturing at the apartment with his arms spread wide. “It’s comfortable isn’t it? Pleasant, mostly private, everything you or I would want to get by. Crawford was much the same. I had all the books I could ever want to read. I had a piano. If I wanted to learn something, Richie would send me a tutor. I should have wanted for nothing. But, we were not meant to live in our heads, India. Lambs live in their heads. 

“Richie must have figured since Crawford kept me busy all those years that this would be more than enough. But, what is here? Perhaps he didn’t know me as well as he thought to think Crawford was ever enough for me. I endured Crawford for him because I thought that was where he wanted me. Just like you, India, I wanted Richie to love me. The difference is, I guess, that Richie did love you. And maybe he loved me to, in his own way. 

“Richie only ever looked at me like an animal that needed to be kept caged. Sometimes I think you look at me like an animal that needs to be put down,” Charlie confesses. 

“That would make me a hypocrite,” I reason. 

Charlie smiles his smug knowing smile. “Condemn me and you condemn yourself.” 

Perhaps we are that single lucky prime couplet, a pair of odds and ends that can only divide into ourselves but somehow adjacent to one another in the sequence. Who else could we possibly divide into but each other? What did my father expect? Was I supposed to go on to college and meet some future date rapist like Whip or Chris Pitts? Was I supposed to backpack in France with my perfect French accent and play piano for the expats only to return to Stoker manor and replay the whole original scene of my parent’s marriage? My father must have known I was always going to be alone. I was never going to get married or have children or take on the haunt of that manor. My father endured that haunt. I was the haunt, me and Charlie.

That is the origin of my resentment. Sure I could have done something bad instead of something worse like sending a bullet through my mother’s skull. And that may have been enough to release me. I didn’t need Charlie to show me what I was. Nothing my father could have done would have prevented me becoming what I am, what I had always been, what he always saw but was too afraid to say aloud. It was always going to end the same way with the gun in my hands whether the recipient of the bullet was my mother, my father, or Charlie himself. So, I resent my father for his disappointed hopes, for holding me to a standard he should have known I would not meet. 

My father forgave Charlie in his last moments. Of this I am absolutely certain. It must have been sometime between blows that my father came to his final epiphany, solidified in that last agonal sigh when Charlie slipped the sunglasses from his eyes and put them on, Richard Stoker staring down that awkwardly bright smile with all the screws screwed in wrong. Richard had seen that smile before on his own daughter when I would reach for the dead animals he taught me to hunt and kill. Not so much teeth but unnerving just the same, self-satisfied and nearly euphoric. My father was not a dumb man. Not a one of his machinations and manipulations had prevented Charlie’s last act, and my father, my good man, resigned himself to the fate he had forestalled for nearly two decades. Not only his fate but my mother’s, Charlie’s, mine. I imagine my father also forgave me for what I was always going to do. 

Charlie, my prime neighbor, comes to stand next to me and presses a few keys. His shoulder brushes mine. 

I count 135 windows on the building opposite ours. I can see my father’s shadow behind the driver’s side window of the burning SUV silhouetted by twilight. I can see Charlie standing a fair distance from the blazing vehicle, watching the flames and the smoke and the sparks from behind my father’s sunglasses. 

Charlie never once lied to me about what he did. He never made up any stories for me, lies that he used to placate the prey. On the staircase the night of the wake, he had sincerely apologized for my loss, aware that while he had gained the world I had lost mine. In the dining room that night, privately amused that my mother thought he had chosen an older wine to charm her, he had admitted to me the wine was chosen to honor the year of my birth, his secret message to me. As my mother succumbed to the haze of summer wine and swooned in my uncle’s arms, Charlie had watched me through the gap in the curtains, fondled my mother while he could not tear his eyes away from me. While he could play the part of fool with my mother, he calmly took the keys with me, showing me his hand. Without hesitation Charlie bound Whip and gladly handed him over for my revenge, strangled the kid and buried him in the Stoker garden without once telling me to keep quiet about it, confident I wouldn’t breathe a word about it. For weeks he seemed an enigma to me, but again hindsight is 20/20. With me Charlie’s cards had always been on the table. 

“Charlie.” 

Without a second thought, he turns to look at me, and I have to stand up on my tiptoes to bring my lips to his, my hand curling along his cleanly shaven jawline. He lets me kiss him chaste once. It feels like forever since I have touched him, and when he grabs me I grab back almost as urgently. He hefts me up onto the piano keys, playing a tone of discord, and I have to grab the edge of the piano, my palms playing a similar off tune. 

No more perfectly combed hair that always looks purposefully windswept when I rake my fingers down his scalp to get him to groan. No more neatly looped leather belt when I am undoing the buckle, feeling his abdomen shudder. 

He tries to say something, swallows, blinks like he is looking through a fog. His hands are clasped around my neck tilting my jaw up to look at him, and his mouth is so close to mine. “Will you play a duet with me?” 

I kiss him on the corner of his mouth where the edges of his lips turn up just slightly, a natural smile just like mine even when we are frowning, kiss him on his dimple. “We are playing it.” He mms when I break the bridge of his slacks. 

Charlie nods absentmindedly, kisses me full on the mouth while I hike the skirt of my nightgown up around my hips. He keeps me looking at him while I cannot see what is going on down there, and the sudden entrance makes me gasp after a choked whimper. He swallows it though and gathers me up in his arms. Each punctuated snap of his hips makes my bottom play a new and undiscovered chord, and I reach one shaky hand down to counter the dissonance with a quick melody cut short by another thrust. His hand tangles in my nearly black hair unruly from sleep and wrenches my head back, buries his face against my neck, traces his tongue up one strained tendon. His other hand comes down over my own, our fingers playing a jumbled tune together. 

My bottom nearly slips from the keys and I think we are both going to tumble to the floor in a hot mess, but his hand leaves my hair to snatch my thigh and wrap it around his hips so he can use the leverage to keep me pinned up on the piano. He chuckles breathlessly, smiles small, and then kisses me softly. “I’d never drop you.” 

I lean my head forward to press my brow to his, stare down into those empty centers of his electric blue eyes. 

I think to myself, you read it in books and hear it in music and see it in all the others, but somehow it feels always unreachable to you. I waited patiently, carried out my days in the woods, wandering the school halls, hiding and hurting and keeping silent. I honed my senses so finely and discreetly, listened so intently for the sign I was sure to come. Perhaps like Charlie I too knew without knowing. He would come. All I had to do was be patient. And in that moment to see him, to feel that unfamiliar headiness come on without warning, pale and swooning as I stumbled back into the kitchen to find Mrs. McGarrick. The sensing that in the gravity of my loss I would gain so much more. 

My climax comes on without warning, something animal hitching in my throat when I grip Charlie’s shoulders with unabashed fervor. My hands travel down to his hips to pull him closer, and he gets the cue to do it harder, snaps his hips forward so my lower back digs into the piano fall behind me. My going tugs Charlie over the edge as well, and he has to slam his hand onto the piano lid to keep his bearings. 

After, we are both trembling and clutching at one another. I gather the lapels of his button up shirt in my hands, the pale blue cotton now wrinkled and damp with sweat, yank him closer to kiss him again, again, again. Charlie keeps me wrapped up in his arms as he falls backwards, drops to sit on the piano bench with me gathered up on his lap. 

Dawn is disappearing and giving way to the full of the day. With my whole body wrapped around his seated on the piano bench, we could not come closer. My face buried in the crook between his neck and shoulder, I hear him start the opening chords of Beethoven’s Appassionata, its previously somber tone overwritten by our recent act. I trace shapes on the nape of his neck, my fingertips catching beads of sweat. I can feel the pulse in his neck, satisfied with its steadiness, its strength and surety. 

Quiet enough that whatever powers be could not hear, words for us alone. “I love you.”


End file.
